Makenzie Marshall   Georgia Leland had forgotten to water her indoor garden and the leaves were fading from green to brown. Perched on a wide wooden windowsill, exposed to the bright Kansas sun, her stem-and-leaf children yawned lazily and stretched out, searching for drink. It was the longest they’d gone without it – six days, […]

Matthew John Fletcher   The afternoon sun hit the terrace at a one hundred and thirty-five-degree angle. The shadow cast on the wall by a figure about halfway through a yoga routine suddenly straightened up and stood motionless, silently observing. The figure continued with its routine, oblivious, until, reaching the floor sequence, it abruptly stopped […]

Srijani Ganguly   ‘I thought you’d have a cat.’ ‘Hmm?’ Roy stirred from his daydream. ‘What did you say?’ The gardener cleared his throat and spoke again. ‘I figured,’ he said, ‘since you’re an Egyptologist and all, that you’d have a cat.’ ‘A cat? Why would I have a cat?’ ‘Didn’t the pharaohs worship them?’ […]

Sian Taylor   Wednesday ‘So, what do you think?’ Sink, taps, bench, cupboards. All shiny and new. Rick surveys the kitchen. Yes, it has everything he would expect to find. He’s not sure what Monique wants him to say. ‘It’s, uh, very nice.’ ‘The benchtop is Italian granite, the appliances German,’ she says. ‘It cost […]

Phoebe Smith   Disquiet. Squirming, urgent agency: this moment is unbearable. The doorman, Bernie, has hastily shoved everyone out at exactly 2am as he always does, his fervent protection of me and the other Gordie’s staff, and of his own anticipated bedtime. It’s 2.05 now. Through the padded door, you can hear the multitude of […]

Makenzie Marshall was born and raised in a small town in Missouri and since meeting her Welsh husband has spent her time stretched between Britain and the US. The couple moved to Ireland for a year in 2017–2018, where Makenzie wrote Nothing Grows from Pomegranate Seeds. In 2018, she returned to the US and finally […]

Özgür Uyanık’s debut novel, Conception, will be published by Fairlight Books in May 2020. Özgür is a writer and filmmaker whose family emigrated from Turkey to the UK in 1980. After graduating from the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he studied Communications and Image Studies, Özgür started a career in the film industry working […]

Ami Rao’s debut novel, David and Ameena, will be published by Fairlight Books in August 2020. Ami is a British-American writer who was born in Calcutta, India and has lived and worked in New York City, London, Paris, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ami has a BA in English Literature and Economics from Ohio Wesleyan […]

Jac Shreeves-Lee is the author of the debut collection of short stories Broadwater, which will be published by Fairlight Books in July 2020. Jac was born and bred in Tottenham. She currently works as a clinical psychologist and magistrate. Her fiction pieces have been widely published in various anthologies, including Virago, the Mechanics Institute Review and […]

Srijani Ganguly has just finished her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick in Ireland. She has six years of experience as a journalist in India, as well as a BA in Geography and an MA in English. She started writing (mainly poems) when she was in school, and later became interested in […]